While it is still earning piles of cash, Apple is stuffed unless Tim Cook comes up with a cunning plan to save it.

Apple’s cash-cow, the iPhone, is now thoroughly milked and is unlikely to provide it with the sorts of cash Apple has been generating for much longer. Other “game changing” technologies that Apple has come up, such as the iWatch and the Tablet, have fallen flat and some of the areas it was spending a fortune to develop such as television and hi-tech driverless cars have been canned. Its wireless music business is not really that great and its contactless payments system has too many rivals.

The Tame Apple Press says that the reason we have not heard Apple’s plans is because the company is “famously secretive”. But that does not really work as we know Apple’s plans often years in advance because it leaks them to its favourites.

Now it seems all those leaks suggest that Apple really has run out of ideas and is waiting for someone else to come up with something good for it to steal. If it does that then Apple really is stuffed and we are not certain that is the case.

For all we think Apple is an evil outfit which is lowering the standards of the world, we do not think that Tim Cook is stupid. Any CEO in his position would be running around like a mad thing trying to find something to sell and market.

In Apple’s most recent financial conference call, Cook spoke about the company’s personal digital assistant, Siri, and said it has fallen behind Google Assistant.

He said that the reason for this was because Google’s knows more about your personal life – scanning all the personal information you have on Google’s services to learn more about you. Cook claims he does not want to do that.

“In terms of the balance of privacy and AI, this is a long conversation, but at a high level, this is a false tradeoff. People would like you to believe you have to give up privacy to have AI do something for you, but we don't buy that. It might take more work, it might take more thinking, but I don't think we should throw our privacy away. It's sort of like the age-old argument between privacy and security. You should have both. You shouldn't have to make a choice.”

That all might be true, but it does mean Cook has to ignore this method of creating AI. In fact, in the same call, he said he thought Personal Digital Assistants Like Amazon’s Echo were a niche market. He thinks assistant technology should be mobile

"We live in a mobile society. People are constantly moving from home to work and to other things they may be doing. And so the advantage of having an assistant on your phone is that it's with you all the time."

So nothing happening there then. Cook wouldn’t comment on Apple’s abandoned car plans, but he does see his outfit revolutionising the car industry in some way:

“I can't speak about rumors, but as you know, we look for ways we can improve the experience and the customer's experience on different sets of products. We're always looking at new things and the car space is an area where it's clear there are a lot of technologies that will become available... or will be able to revolutionize the car experience. It's interesting from that point of view. But certainly nothing to announce today.”

So probably not anything happening on that front either.

Tim Cook revealed his company’s thoughts on the burgeoning technology of augmented reality:

"Augmented reality will take some time to get right, but I do think that it's profound. We might ... have a more productive conversation, if both of us have an AR experience standing here, right? And so I think that things like these are better when they're incorporated without becoming a barrier to our talking. ... You want the technology to amplify it, not to be a barrier.”

This seems to suggest that Apple might end up coming up with some nerd glasses. If it is done well, this is exactly the sort of thing that Apple could make a bob or two out of. Glasses would have to be fashionable and cool looking but have functionality at the same time. However Apple will have to be quick or else it will find that others have taken the market before it gets its act together. Apple seems a long way away from having a product yet.

But what worries us is this is the only area where Apple is doing something to come up with a new product. Other comments which have come from the cargo cult suggest a closing of ranks around the iPhone and little else.

This means that Cook is going to have to come up with something better, or reveal something a little more interesting of his cunning plan and soon. While cynics like me can be safely ignored by Apple, shareholders and others might start wanting to see change.

For the first time in Nintendo history the company has announced sales targets for the Wii U and the software to accompany the new console. The targets are “ambitious,” to say the least.

The company wants to sell 5.5 million Wii consoles and 24 million software titles before March 31st. The numbers are big, but sources tell us that the company believes (based on the initial pre-ordering of the console) the numbers are within reason if they can produce enough consoles and get them into the pipeline quickly enough.

The logistics of building the console and keeping dealer shelves full will be the challenge, according to an analyst that we spoke with. “It is possible for Nintendo to meet those targets and maybe even exceed them, but they have to get the consoles into dealer hands.”

The plans for the promised NeoGeo handheld that we told you about some time back have been announced. The NeoGeo X Gold, which is a partnership between Tommo and SNK Playmore, will launch worldwide on December 6th with a suggested retail price of $199.

The NeoGeo X Gold package will come with the NeoGeo X handheld, the NeoGeo X Station, and the NeoGeo X Joystick. The handheld will feature a 4.3-inch LCD screen, SD card slot to load additional game titles, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The handheld comes pre-loaded with 20 NeoGeo titles.

The NeoGeo X handheld uses the NeoGeo X Station to charge the handheld as well as transfer the gaming action to your television screen using either HDMI or composite video connection. The NeoGeo X Joystick connects to the NeoGeo X Station, which in turn connects to your TV for the ultimate in a classic NeoGeo gaming experience.

Tommo Inc. who will be handling the distribution of the NeoGeo X Gold in most regions, we are told, but Blaze will be handling the distribution of the NeoGeo X Gold in Europe. It is unclear currently if there is a timetable to release an add-on NeoGeo X Joystick or additional SD Cards containing additional game bundles; but if sales are good, expect to see them quickly.

While the $200 price tag is higher than many were hoping for, this is clearly a bigger package than what was initially thought. It will be interesting to see how well it sells, but those who wanted a NeoGeo when it was first released will finally be able to afford one.

Sources tell us that Sony is apparently developing an even smaller and slimmer PlayStation 3, or so we are led to believe. Of course, with Gamescom around the corner and the upcoming holiday season, a smaller unit with a number of cost reductions could equal a significant price cut that could help Sony capture new customers or maybe attract those who want to add it a second console.

While Sony has publically said that they have not announced anything yet, they go on to state that they would never say never about another reduction in cost and size that might be right around the corner. We suspect this could be an indication that the company is at least thinking about it, if it isn’t in development already.

How and what Sony might revise to make the PlayStation 3 cost less is a matter of much discussion. A hardware expert we spoke with suggests that a company’s engineers will seek savings in all of the standard places; and given the configuration makeup of parts used in the unit it could be difficult, but not impossible. Of course, the question is really whether the development costs yield enough of a return on its investment for Sony to move in this direction.

Electronic Arts didn’t really have much to confirm that was coming for the Wii U, with only Mass Effect 3 as the only title EA announced. Despite whispers suggesting that the company wanted to see what kind of sales to expect from the Wii U before committing to more titles, the company apparently has plans for other titles; we just don’t have anything to announce yet.

This was the message that EA CEO John Riccitiello gave in a conference call with investors. Riccitiello also said they had a number of sports games that were going to be coming to the Wii U platform. No additional details were announced and he provided no timetable when these sports titles might arrive; but the safe bet would likely be 2013, at the earliest.

EA isn’t the only publisher who didn’t announce much for the Wii U. Powerhouse Activision had nothing to announce, either; but Skylanders Giants is confirmed as headed to the Wii U platform. Activision seems to be taking a wait and see attitude, with Ubisoft taking an “all in” approach with the publisher announcing a large number of titles headed for the Wii U.

Intel’s chief executive Paul Otellini shed some light on Chipzilla’s plans and confirmed that the company already has 7nm and 5nm processes in mind.

Intel is currently planning on setting up its fabs in Oregon, Arizona and Ireland for 14 nm production. According to a slide shown in a meeting with investors, this would ensure development of the 14nm process by 2015.

Otellini reminded that Intel’s R&D is quite deep and looks decades in advance. He said that the company’s 7nm and 5nm efforts are “on time and on target”, although we’re still talking about R&D phase.

It has been reported that the financial crisis in the EU prompted Acer to turn to emerging markets for profit and the company plans on shipping a million PCs to Brazil in 2012.

Digitimes quotes industry sources as saying that Acer launched a price war to increase its share in Brazil. Apparently, the company has seen some results and it plans to continue full throttle.

Brazilian laws stipulate high customs duties on imported PCs in order to protect domestic companies. However, Acer, HP and others went around this by shipping components and barebones from China to Brazil, which are then assembled by Brazilian OEM partners.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced that Netflix is abandoning plans to add video game rentals to its DVD and Blu-ray rental offerings. Originally, the news that the company would be getting into the video game rental business was born out of the Quikster spinoff plan (which was aborted before it got off the ground).

The justification for the Netflix decision comes from a number of things; but the biggest reason is that Netflix is seeing a major drop in disc by mail, and at the same time seeing a major increase in streaming. The theory from Netflix is that the entire disc by mail business isn’t what it used to be, and consumers seem to be finding it less compelling. Given that information, Netflix apparently feels it just isn’t the right decision to add video game rentals and have to fight to establish itself in that space.

This news will be a huge boon for video game rental company GameFly. While GameFly didn’t publically comment when Netflix announced that it was planning to get into the video game rental by mail business, it did continue to beef up its own infrastructure to provide better service to its subscribers. It is estimated that GameFly has the vast majority of the video game rental business with so many other choices dropping out of the game.

Microsoft has been working on its own streaming TV plans of sorts that would feature exclusive content. Apparently, however, despite building out its Microsoft TV and Microsoft TV infrastructure to deliver this exclusive streaming content, plans are now in a holding pattern.

The reason boils down to cost. Microsoft was apparently more than a bit surprised at how much it actually costs to deliver exclusive broadcast content. Once they found out what kind of money it would take they have apparently decided (for the time being, at least) that they will work on partnerships with other providers to stream their content to the Xbox 360.

While Microsoft has issued a statement on the subject, it is nothing more than what we have told you here: they will continue to work with content providers and partner with them to get their content to the Xbox Live platform, but Microsoft does not comment on rumors and speculation. While we assume that you will continue to see more entertainment coming to the Xbox platform, we are not sure that it will be exclusive Microsoft-driven content till they can find a model to make it work for them.

A sequel for Enslaved: Odyssey to the West has apparently been scrapped for the time being. Developer Ninja Theory claims that the title’s ‘underperformance’ is the reason for the decision. While the studio admits that it should have done better, the lack of sales has caused the studio not to expand or to add a second development team.

According to reports, the title only sold 730,000 as of last spring; but the title did receive pretty good reviews and those that played it seemed to enjoy it for the most part, which was a good sign. So, instead of working on the sequel to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, the studio is working on a new reboot to the Devil May Cry franchise which is planned for release next year for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

While no one is saying that a sequel to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West will never happen in the future, right now it seems pretty unlikely.